Shaman builds
Talent Trees By Purpose Solo PvE Enhancement The most common leveling talent tree is that of the Enhancement Shaman. Blue posts on the Blizzard Forums even state that this is the designers intent. It is very mana efficient and therefore suffers from the least downtime while dealing high amounts of damage. This is key against mobs. Elemental This talent tree can also be chosen for leveling. Some even perfer it over Enhancement. At lower levels, down time can be a problem. Once Water Shield is learned, however, there is hardly any down time. Restoration These builds aren't a good choice for leveling due to the low damage output. Although survivabilty becomes very high, battles will be drawn put and down time will be a big issue due to high mana costs. Group PvE Restoration Sometimes the most wanted, and most favored in a group. Because healers can be a hard find, a Resto Shaman can be substituted for any healing class. There are talents that increase healing, along with reduced mana costs, Resto Shaman can keep a party alive for a long battle. Due to the total of 4 possible totems out on the field to buff the party, any talent based Shaman is highly favored, since there are plenty of totems that serve for all classes in WOW. That is, melee attackers, mana users, and healers. Enhancement This talent tree can easily out DPS Restoration, but comes to a close tie with Elemental. With low mana costs and high damage output, Enhancement Shaman can serve as a strong DPS choice in any group. Along with damage reducing talents, a well geared Enhancement Shaman can be an off tank for a group with low armored clothies. Elemental This talent tree is also a high damage out put tree that outperforms Restoration in DPS, but is really close with Enhancement. Elemental falls short to Enhancement for one main reason. Mana Efficency. At low levels, Down time can be horrid, causing DPS to slip. At higher levels, this can no longer become a problem. But because this is a mana based talent tree, mana can disappear fast. PvP Enhancement It uses very little mana and the talents allow for more damage, mana efficency, and reduced damage taken. Enhancement Shamans can take out any cloth class if they get the first hit in. However, Shamans as a rule are extremely vulnerable to crowd control, stuns and fear, so have your trinket at the ready. Elemental Also very good in Battlegrounds, when you have the range. Being a caster makes it harder to survive against strong melee classes. With high damage output at the cost of mana, this talent tree can survive a few good battles with distance. Once an enemy gets within range (or out of range), then there are very few options available to survive. Spells are the main damage output here, making your melee damage very weak. Restoration In the endgame, this is a favorite. Although horribly weak in damage output, Resto Shamans have a much easier time surviving when they have an abundance of mana. But once your mana is gone, there is very little a Resto Shaman can do. Without a strong melee class paired up with the Resto Shaman, there is very little the Shaman can do to the other team. Elemental The Elemental Tree will cause the Shaman to become somewhat of a "Mail Armored Mage." You will have the Damage output close to a caster, but your survivabilty will be greater due to more armor and talents. IMPORTANT! These Elemental builds go into Resto due to the reduction of mana costs and increased survivabilty. Both these properties complement Elemental very well. You can go into Enhancement, but it is an unlikely choice since the tree does not help any of your Elemental spells. Leveling / 5-Man Instances Elemental is not an easy leveling tree until level 40, when Elemental Mastery is available. Once level 40 has been hit, it is possible to respec to Elemental with this build 31/0/0. With this build, shaman can get in 3 Lightning Bolts (or a Chain Lightning for one instead) and a Shock before your target reaches you. This build allows reduced casting time and longer range on Lightning Bolt, more damage with spells, mana cost reduction with spells, a bit more mana regeneration, and more crits with spells, especially with Elemental Mastery. By the time you finish your talent points in this area, you will want them to look something like 41/0/20 You go into the Restoration Tree for reduced cast time on Healing Wave, reduced mana cost on totems, and higher crit chance of Lightning Spells. With these talents, your Lightning Spells have an 11% additional chance to crit, not including your own spell crit added in! Raiding Raiding is much different to small groups and solo play. The hard bosses found in dungeons cause shaman to change their talents up a bit to fit both the raid members and the things needed to function in a raid. A build like this 41/0/20 is key to successful raiding. It uses talents like Elemental Percision, Improved Reincarntion, and Nature's Guidance. These talents, although look stupid at first, actually help you to function in a raid setting. Many high level bosses can resist the spells you dish out at them. With the improved hit chance, your spells are less likely to be resisted. The last 20 points are again used in Resto. These points allow for more crit chances on lightning spells, reduced mana cost of totems, and increased totem radius. These talkents help both you and your raid function easier. A total of +16% spell hit is needed vs. lvl. 73 bosses. An elemental shaman always has at least +9% spell hit from Totem of Wrath and Elemental Precision. PvP Elemental has some talents that are taken to reduce DPS for a better chance for survivability. the build looks like this 40/0/21 Here, we are given Elemental Warding, Eye of the Storm, and Elemental Shields. You may also note that Totem of Wrath has disappeared for Nature's Swiftness. This increases survivability in the long run since it causes an instant nature spell (lighning or healing spell). This build is focused on keeping you fightning next to the tough guys for a long time, even though your damage has been dropped by a small amount. Enhancement This tree offers 2 key things. Great damage with zero down time. This tree will gives you the damage output of a rogue, while reducing more damage with high armor. Due to this tree being more of a melee side, most of your damage will be melee with a few spells. You will be able to dual wield, which offers more damage to your target. Leveling / 5-Man Instances This tree is based on melee damage compared to spell damage. There are two main theories when going this route. #Conserve mana for heals with zero down time, but longer battles. #Use Spells against enemies to shorten battles, but increase downtime. Both are good, but some prefer one over the other. Leveling can be a little drawn out until level 40, when you are able to get Stormstrike and Dual Wield. These two talents will ultimately make leveling super easy. The build would look something like this 0/32/0. Once you are able to get Shamanistic Rage, you will almost never have downtime with an abundant regeneration rate of mana. You will finally end up with this build 18/43/0. This build goes into Elemental to greatly increase damage output and at the same time be more mana efficient. With this build, leveling will be a breeze. Raiding Shaman are a major DPS class in raids. With a combination of strong melee attacks and spells, along with all the buffs that totems provide, a raiding shaman is a very strong class. Some of the damage reduced talents are taken out like Anticipation and Toughness. These are taken out because tanks should take most, if not, all damage. They are replaced with skills that give a hit raiding, which is mandatory against high level bosses. These are Dual Wield Specialization and Nature's Guidance. A great Raiding Talent Spec would look something like this 0/44/17. This build focuses on greatly increasing the benefits on party members along with increasing your damage output. PvP Enhancement is far from an ideal spec for PvP. A distinct lack of ability to "close the gap" due to vulnerability to movement impairing effects makes PvP, especially Arena play where crowd control is king, very difficult for the Enhancement Shaman. However this is somewhat mitigated by a extreme potential for burst damage once in melee range. Survival is a key issue in Enhancement PvP, and some players may elect alternate dual-wielding with a shield/1hand setup via macros to enhance their ability to absorb damage due to other players tendency to focus fire shamans early in a match. Builds vary somewhat depending on playstyle and a PvE spec can do just fine in PvP, but many players opt to pick up more points in the restoration tree for more survivability. Improved Ghost Wolf is also an option that, situationally, you may be glad to have. An example of this build is 0/42/19 Restoration There is no leveling talent build here, since it would be pointless to level a resto shaman. Use one of the other Talent Trees to level. You could, however, level Resto, but strictly do instances until you are ready to respec for a different purpose. 5-Man Instances / Raiding Shamans are in high demand for heals in any group. These shaman focus on reducing their aggro from heals. This is so focus is not pulled from the tank to the healing shaman. Any Resto Spec will focus mostly on improved healing along with group support. The key talents here are Nature's Swiftness, Mana Tide Totem, and Earth Shield. A good Talent Build would be http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=hZxZxcxtAested. PvP Again, healers are in high demand, especially Shaman due to their totems. As stated before, Enhancement is the best way to go due to high damage output and reduced damage to yourself. You may think you are not helping as a healer because you do no damage, but in reality, Resto Spec servers a dual purpose. #You will be very hard to kill due to increased healing talents, which make you survive while you have mana. #An Enhancement shaman soloing players can be quite a challenge, sometimes producing little or no damage to the target. Imagine a Resto Shaman keeping a warrior up with heals. Warriors are ment to receive and dish out tons of physial damage. Because they do a lot more damage and they stay in combat longer with no cool down, the two of you will be invalueable. A Healing PvP Spec would look sometihng like this 0/7/54. You will see that Healing Grace is removed, and in place is Improved Ghost Wolf. This is invaluable when you are unable to mount and you need a quick getaway. There isn't much change between the raiding spec and PvP spec, so you could possibly use the Raiding Spec for both raids and PvP. This way you wont have to respec everytime you would rather raid instead of PvP and vise-versa. Links Extensive Talent Guide Category:Guides Category:Shamans Category:Talents Category:Shaman Talents